Edenville Owls
- Автор: Паркер Роберт Браун
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Sleuth Philomel
- ISBN: 978-0-399-24656-2
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Edenville Owls». Краткое содержание книги:
“It’s my child too,” he said.
“You leave both of them alone,” I said. “And you move away from here. We don’t care where, but it has to be a long way from here, and you never come back and you never bother Miss Delaney again.”
It was quiet. I could hear my own breathing. And my heartbeat. He stood alone on the bandstand. The six of us stood around the bandstand. Nobody moved.
“And if I don’t?” he said.
“We start talking, including how you threatened to kill us.”
“And if I talk about Miss Delaney and the marriage and divorce she didn’t mention and the child she lied about...?”
“Maybe she gets fired,” Joanie said from behind him. “But you get taken away by the army and executed.”
“Are you willing to make that swap?” I said.
He looked around at us. He looked at the big knife he was holding. Then he pushed the button and closed the knife and put it in his pocket.
“I accept your offer,” he said.
Chapter 43
None of us knew what to do next. Including Tupper... or Krauss. I couldn’t figure out what to call him in my head. Tupper, I decided, that’s what his name was to me. We stood still where we were, like sometime had stopped the movie projector and a single frame stood motionless on the screen.
“Does Claudia know?” he asked all of a sudden.
“She doesn’t know about this meeting,” I said.
“Does she know I deserted?” he said.
“Yes.”
He put his hands behind his back and began to walk slowly around the bandstand.
“You’re children,” he said. “You can’t know.”
He kept walking. It was more like he was talking to himself than to us.
“Every day wondering if you’ll die. Every night afraid to go to sleep because you might not wake up. Every day people dying near you.”
He stopped and looked toward the harbor, and stood there.
“I had to go,” he said to himself, or us, or the harbor, or something.
All of us stood there watching him, none of us saying anything.
“You gotta be gone from here by Wednesday,” I said. “Or we tell everybody.”
I hadn’t really thought about when he would leave. In my head it was like, we face him down, and he disappears. But I didn’t know what else to say, and the Wednesday deadline just sort of came out.
“Two days,” he said sadly. “Two days for a man who was nearly killed defending a country that has long since gone to hell. Two days.”
He shook his head, still looking toward the harbor.
“Risk your life defending the Jews and the coons,” he said.
I didn’t like him saying the coon stuff in front of Manny.
Tupper turned from the harbor and looked at us; it was a funny look. He looked right at us, but I don’t know if he actually saw us.
“You know,” he said, “all the movies you see are made by the Jews. You know that they have signed a nigger to play baseball with white men.”
We were all starting to shift around a little. We were getting sick of him.
“You gotta be gone by Wednesday,” I said to him. “And never come back.”
“It wasn’t cowardice,” Tupper said.
With his hands behind his back, he started walking around the bandstand again.
“It was a revelation. Suddenly, in the midst of the carnage, I realized I could no longer fight this evil war. I was willing to pay any price, take any risk, but not for the niggers and the Jews and the Communists. I would walk away. I would risk the wrath of the army and the disdain of my countrymen, if I had to...”
“Probably why he grabbed some other guy’s name,” Russell said.
“And his medal,” Nick said.
Tupper appeared not to hear them.
“But I would not continue in this monstrous betrayal.”
Russell walked over to Manny.
“Guy’s a lunatic,” he said to Manny. “Let’s get out of here.”
Manny nodded and the two of them walked away.
“We should have been fighting the Communists,” Tupper said.
Billy saw Russell and Manny leaving and looked at me. I shrugged. He went after them.
“I don’t want to listen to this anymore either,” Nick said.
“Me either,” I said.
We both looked at Joanie
“Or me,” Joanie said.
“The Nazi’s understood the threat,” Tupper said.
He was looking down at the floor as he walked, hands clasped behind his back, like he was musing out loud.
“Wednesday,” I said.
And Nick and I walked away with Joanie between us.
“Don’t you see?” Tupper said. “Don’t you sense it, the poison, the corruption seeping into every small crevice? I did the only thing I could do...”
We walked Joanie home, then Nick and I walked partway home together, and separated when Nick went up toward his house and I kept on toward mine. As soon as Nick was out of sight, I started running toward home.
He never said, and neither did I. But I’ll bet Nick did the same thing.
Chapter 44
All day Monday and Tuesday I walked around with a sinking feeling in the middle of my stomach, like you get sometimes going down in an elevator. In class, I thought Miss Delaney seemed a little tired, but maybe it was just me. Nobody else seemed to notice.
On Wednesday after school, all of us, Joanie too, rode our bicycles up to Searsville. We stopped and huddled up just before we got there, at a bend in the road, out of sight, about a hundred yards from the church and meetinghouse.
“What if he’s got a gun or something?” Russell said.
“He can’t shoot us all,” I said.
“He can if we all go in,” Russell said.
“I’ll go in,” I said.
“And me,” Joanie said.
Everyone looked at her. And at me. You couldn’t expect a girl to go in. But she wanted to. She’d snuck in upstairs at Miss Delaney’s house with me. The truth was, I felt safer with her along. I didn’t know why. She couldn’t do anything if Tupper did have a gun.
“Okay,” I said. “Me and Joanie will go in. The rest of you will string out along the road. Russell will be right at the turn where he can see and hear what’s going on. Then down the road farther, but where he can still see Russell, will be Nick, and farther down will be Manny and farther will be Billy. Anything happens, you can signal each other and take off for the cops... You all know where the police station is in Searsville?”
They all did.
“Anything happens... any gunshots... or you get a signal from me or Joanie or Russell, you know. All of you ride like hell for the station. Don’t wait for me, or Joanie, or each other. All of you ride for the cops, whoever gets there first...”
They took their positions.
Joanie and I went on around the bend and into the gravel yard. There were no cars there. The door to the meetinghouse was half-open. We stood for a minute and listened. We didn’t hear anything. We walked to the meetinghouse door.
“Stay outside,” I said to Joanie, “so Russell can see you.”
She nodded. Her face was pale and tight. Her eyes seemed even bigger than usual.
With a big clenched lump in the middle of my stomach, I pushed open the door and peeked in. Nothing. I went in. Nothing. No movement. No sound. I walked around the room. The folding chairs were stacked where we had stacked them before we had left on Sunday. The big flag with the cross on it was gone. I went back out.
“Nobody there,” I said to Joanie.
She nodded. We walked to the church. She stayed out. I went in. Silence. Emptiness. Nothing. I went back out and shook my head. Both of us looked at the space where the shiny new trailer had been. It was gone. Joanie looked at me and smiled. I nodded.